Charles Manson releases album under free license

April 6, 2008

Convicted cult leader and murderer Charles Manson has released his album One Mind under a free content license. The album was already released on April 7, 2005, but now it has become available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 2.0 License. This means that anyone can remix and share the album for non-commercial purposes, as long as they give proper credit and use the same license.

The website Family Jams (Manson’s record label), which offers hard-copies of the CD, says that "ONE MIND is pure Charlie, no additions, no corrections, no added opinions, filters or editing... consisting of songs, trance-poetry, conversations, raps, ramblings, musings and more." The cover-art is a painting by Manson, liner notes include excerpts from his letters, and, as the sites mentions, song titles and interludes are by friends or editors.

The disc has 16 tracks, totalling almost 76 minutes of Manson's work. The CD can be bought on the Family Jams site for $15.00 in the U.S. and Canada, and for $17.50 in other countries. Because of the new license, the tracks can be legally downloaded, and samples can be used for derived works.

Manson was part of the Los Angeles music scene before his conviction as leader of the Manson Family commune. He was close to Beach Boy Dennis Wilson —Manson wrote the song 'Never Learn Not to Love' for the Beach Boys.

In 1970, Manson released the album Lie: The Love & Terror Cult to finance his trial. The Manson Family also released The Family Jams, with songs written by Manson. Manson has released several albums since.

Groups such as Nine Inch Nails have previously released some of their work under a free license.

In a related story, Lindsay Lohan will play Nancy Pitman in an upcoming movie called Manson Girls. Lohan has previously revealed that she was fascinated by Manson during her "dark period" before she sought help for drug and alcohol addiction in 2007: "Yeah, I have a dark side. I watched all those videos on Charles Manson for a while." Lohan also stars in the movie Chapter 27 about John Lennon's assassination.